[clue] time server question

[Andrew Diederich]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 9:41 AM, <dennisjperkins at comcast.net> wrote:

> The time stamps for the data must be in local time.
>
> Since our customers are using Windows, they are using local time.  I don't
> know if a time server on Windows can use UTC and the individual computers
> can use that to stay in sync, but convert to local time, and hopefully
> decide whether to use daylight savings.
>

If you store the data in local time and don't keep any information about
the UTC offset, I don't think there is a solution. It's like storing the
time as 11:21, and not knowing AM or PM. If you write a fair amount of
data, even as low as a record every half hour, you're guaranteed to
overwrite data. Nothing can help you. Even if you get data, say, from a
wall thermometer with the time zone not included, if you save it with the
inserted time you can figure out if you were or weren't in daylight savings.

As long as the time server exists you don't need to worry if the server is
set to local time, UTC, or anything else. Magic occurs between the client
and server and does the translation.

-- 
Andrew Diederich
andrewdied at gmail.com
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